The best mobile application testing tools for QA pros

As a professional QA tester or QA manager, you need to stay up to date on the best mobile application testing tools to help you deliver amazing customer experiences while also optimizing the way you work.

Mobile app testing is extremely complicated. The most successful apps have 200 times more code deployments than the lowest performing ones. 

Not only are you dealing with continuous deployment, but also device types, connectivity, and mobile settings are all part of the customers’ environment and can seriously affect mobile performance.

These tools can help you improve your test coverage and test cycle speed so that you can deliver results to engineers faster. 

Use cases for mobile app testing tools 

Most of the tools showcased below have multiple use cases. Oftentimes, testing tools aren’t so much tools but rather platforms with robust feature sets. It’s important to note what’s already in your tech stack, what’s missing, and what can be improved upon.

These are all of the reasons why QA professionals utilize mobile app testing tools:

• Manual test case management
• Issue tracking
• Device emulators
• Automated testing (running and re-using scripts)

Because there tends to be some overlap in those use cases, we’ve split up our list of recommendations into two types of mobile application testing tools: those made for manual testing and those designed for automated testing.

Manual mobile application testing tools

To succeed at manual mobile testing, you need to follow a systematic approach that will allow you to both strategize how to cover the entire application while also exploring features the way a user naturally would. These tools can help you achieve the right balance while also tracking your work.

Testlio

Testlio offers the industry’s most flexible mobile app test management software. An intuitive modular platform guides you effortlessly through the testing process including Builds, Tests, Plans, Teams, Runs, Issues, Integrations, and Reports. All of these modules are available under our secure cloud Architecture and bundled within a flexible Fully-managed or Co-managed approach to testing.

• Testlio’s public API, integrations, and partnerships enable CI/CD builds, DevOp workflows, project management, automation testing, monitoring, and more.
• Quickly access insights on testers, time, devices, locations, actions, results, trends, recommendations, and more are available at your fingertips.
• Real-time traceability into everything that happens, including issues, tests, devices, and the source of root changes.

Learn more

TestRail

As one of the most popular tools for manual test case creation and management, TestRail is an important part of a QA tech stack. 

Some of the best features include:

• Rich test cases with test type, priority, pre-conditions, time estimates, and more
• Ability to allocate testing resources to different cases and plan a test run
• Real-time reports and metrics on current test runs to evaluate manual testing progress (really important since otherwise manual testing can lack visibility)

BrowserStack

With BrowsterStack, you can test your mobile app on different device emulators and simulators to find more complex issues than just responsiveness and screen size concerns.

The top features include:

• Works for all major Android and iOS devices
• Helps development teams build apps that are stable across different devices
• Includes both emulators and simulators for virtual device testing
• Can serve as a starting point for manual testing (keep in mind that physical mobile app testing is still important to maintain quality, and that virtual alone isn’t enough)

Kobiton

Kobitron enables manual testing on real devices in the cloud.

Here are the top features:

• From your desktop, lets you test natural mobile gestures including tap, swipe, and scroll
• Captures detailed logs with videos, screenshots, gestures performed, and environment stats like memory and battery 
• Makes it easy to replay issues and replicate bugs

GitHub

Well, you can’t argue with those stats. Where would manual testing be without GitHub? The majority of manual testers have logged issues into GitHub at some point in their careers, and for good reason. The platform is still widely used by developers. 

For testers, here are the top features:

• Track issues in the same platform that developers use to track debugging and new development
• Robust issue tracking with prioritization, application area, and more
• Issues can be assigned as tasks, turning the issue tracking into a project management function

TestFairy

As a QA manager, you might be in charge of not only managing testing to discover new bugs but also acting as a gatekeeper for the bugs passed on from customers to engineers. With TestFairy, you can keep track of user-discovered issues and send them over to your bug tracking tool.

• Collects real session recordings of user bugs, crashes, and errors
• Collects feedback from beta testers
• Helps with tracking and prioritizing user-discovered issues
• Includes native integrations with Trello, JIRA, GitHub and other popular bug tracking tools

Automated mobile application testing tools

Now let’s take a look at the top tools for excelling at automated testing, whether you’re new or experienced at it. Some of the key things to look out for are device compatibility and environment combinations as well as ways to save time creating and managing automating testing scripts. 

HeadSpin

HeadSpin has been steadily gaining in popularity as a go-to for automated mobile testing because it includes not only functionality testing capabilities but also performance and load testing. 

Top features include:

• Coverage of any device and device-environment combination, including not only Android and iOS mobile devices but also wearables
• Supports automated testing on all major frameworks (Appium, Selenium, XCTest, and Espresso, etc.)
• Helps you set and track quality assurance KPIs

Bitbar

Bitbar is a mobile app testing platform that lets you test on real mobile devices from your web browser.

Here are some of the top features:

• Helps you scale device testing
• Works for all major Android and iOS devices
• Combines OS versions, screen resolutions, CPU, GPU, RAM, and storage capacity so you can test hundreds of combinations
• Automated mobile testing works with any framework (Appium, Calabash, Ranorex, Espresso, Robot Framework, etc.)

TestComplete

TestComplete is a popular automated mobile testing tool because of its variety of testing solutions all inside one platform.

Top features are:

• Includes real devices and device emulators
• Helps you run automated tests on both Android and iOS with one set of code
• Lets you record mobile gestures such as swipe, pinch, drag, drop, or scroll on one device and then utilize them across multiple devices

But of course, as useful as mobile application testing tools are, it’s impossible to guarantee app quality without the right humans on board. Tools simply can’t test the way that skilled QA testers can. That’s why, no matter what your tech stack looks like, make sure you have the resources you need to provide full test coverage and creative exploration.